(click on the comic to enlarge)

By Christopher Allen

(Note: Although I’ve tried my best to avoid spoilers, I advise that anyone who plans to watch the movie do so before reading this. The only reason someone should read this detailed review is if her or she was unsure about watching the movie.)

Unless you’ve  been hiding under a rock for the past six months, you have probably heard of and hopefully seen Inception. This masterpiece of cinema is the brainchild of director Christopher Nolan, the same person behind  The The Dark Knight. For those of you among the hordes of The The Dark Knight-worshipers, two actors from The Dark Knight were recast into Inception. These were Michael Caine and Cillian Murphy, who portrayed Alfred the Butler and Scarecrow, respectively.

So the big question everyone asks is, “Does this movie live up to The Dark Knight?”  I’m going to defer from answering that because A) I don’t want Heath Ledger fans chasing me around school with penny-filled socks and B) that’s a very subjective judgment to make. Unlike the lackluster parade of summer movies we’ve been graced with this year, Inception actually requires active thinking over just staring at a screen with moving pictures. The Dark Knight was more of a spectacle: you sit back and watch as Batman growls like he has a hairball, while the Joker runs around killing every secondary character in the story. In Inception, you have to keep your eyes and ears open, as running off to the bathroom in the middle of the movie will be a deathblow to your experience. However, if you can understand the preliminary fifteen minutes of the movie, you’re more than capable of understanding the rest of the movie.

Inception follows the story of Cobb, an extractor who enters people’s dreams and steals or implants information from/into the subconscious of the person being extracted. For a reason that is eventually explained, Cobb cannot return to his children back in the United States, but is given a chance for a clean slate by performing inception on the heir to an  energy conglomerate. While the premise of the story seems unadorned, thing start getting really interesting once characters start entering dreams.

However, I want to stress that Inception is not a six hundred pound gorilla of a movie that will stomp your brain into jelly if you try to watch it. The beauty of Inception is that it optimizes its complexity, in that it explains only what needs to be explained. The perfect example of this is the dream-machine that the characters use to, you guessed it , go into dreams. Cobb doesn’t go down into a fifteen minute monologue that explains how it works, or why it attaches to your wrists and not your forehead, or why the activation button is a dull orange rather than a bright red . You take it at face value and accept it so you can ponder more important things in the movie.

That was one of the flaws in The Matrix. Since so many decide to draw comparisons between the Matrix trilogy and Inception, I’ll join in the fun and do the same (The Matrix spoilers ahead).  The first and most lethal flaw of The Matrix is that Neo becomes all-powerful after the first installment, so any action you see him partake in after the first movie becomes meaningless, because you have no real reason to fear for his safety. The second flaw of The Matrix is its complexity. While watching the trilogy, you are bombarded with hitherto unexplained philosophy from a dozen different belief systems, all of  which fail to make the movie more sophisticated and enthralling.

Inception takes care of these two flaws quite easily. The characters only have slightly heightened abilities in dreams, but just the right amount so you still fear for their safety. Furthermore, dying in a dream under the right conditions does turn out to be a bad thing. Instead of having Confucianist teachings thrown at you during a gun fight, you get several phrases that are discreetly inserted at several key parts in the film that reappear throughout the film. And when they do reappear, they reappear with gravity. For those of you who have already seen the movie, recall the whole, “You’re waiting for a train…” line is a great example of this.

The true genius of Inception is how its plot and level of action coexist peacefully. Most movies that have this level of action handicap their plot to accommodate for the action . Inception uses action scenes only when it needs to,and has  just the perfect amount to keep the gentlemen interested and the ladies not revolted. And when the plot does deepen near the climax, the action remains present but doesn’t try to hog the center stage.

The fantastic cast is another boon  that Inception is blessed with. Leonardo DiCarpio is as masterful as ever, portraying a brokenhearted widower to the tee. Ellen Page does a wonderful job at  serving as Cobb’s conscience, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays his role as the serious planner perfectly, while his interactions with Tom Hardy’s sarcastic and quick-witted character make the film all the more entertaining. The cast as a whole did a fantastic job at portraying realistic characters in such a bizarre dream world.

Once again, whether or not Inception is a good or bad movie is up to you. If you just want to zone out and stare at a screen, I suggest you stay away. But if you want an intelligent movie, that will make you think for days afterward and spark hour long debates with your friends, Inception is your movie.

Freshman enter High School through the "gauntlet" of Link Leaders. For some, this is their first High School experience.

Every year, the Fountain Valley High School  organizes Link Crew, a fun and welcoming freshman orientation event that helps incoming freshmen become more comfortable with High School the week before school starts. This year’s event, which was held on­­ the 23^rd and 24^th of August, was very successful.

The class of 2014 was first welcomed to FVHS by reassuring cheers as they walked through a gauntlet of link leaders dressed in uniformly vivid  blue shirts. After name tags where distributed, the freshmen sat down in the bowl for an encouraging pep talk with Mr. Nelson, a proud and dedicated  teacher. They were told how high school worked, and the basic rules that governed it. Among the guest speakers was Mr. Herzfeld, FVHS’s  very own principal, who personally gave his greetings to the new students.

The gathering was also filled with ice-breaking activities and funny songs. “Pop the Balloon” for example, was  a game where six boys and girls were given a balloon to pop by  squeezing the balloon between them.

After the opening meeting, freshmen felt pumped to get into personal groups with their link leaders. Each group had slightly more than ten freshmen for every two link leaders.

Each group played different games such as Count Off and 64 Squares. The freshmen  were also able to listen to each Link Leader go through their personal high school experiences. By the end of the session, the freshmen were definitely much more comfortable about starting high school. They were also given tips on how to survive the first hectic year.

Incoming “Freshie” Pauline Nguyen (’14) says, “Link Crew really helped me get a feel [for ] what high school was going to be like, and now I’m super excited!”

The tradition of dressing freshmen in silly costume continued onward this year. Kids dressed in a variety of costumes and props, ranging from trash bags and hippies to the famous Mystery machine from Scooby Doo could be seen wandering the campus.

The orientation  ended with a campus tour and an optimistic closing speech by Mr. Nelson. All in all, everything went smoothly and the freshmen had a good time.

Link leader Justine Nguyen (’11) comments, “The freshmen this year really surprised me. Some acted like how the teachers warned us, which was pretty immature, but mostly they held themselves accordingly and seemed to fit in perfectly at Fountain Valley.”

Seniors celebrate graduation at OCC.

June 7, 2010

By Brie Roche Lilliott, staff writer

Hopefully, you’ve been listening to your regular morning announcements so you already know all about our giveaway, right? If not, that’s okay. Here we have all the information you need to know in order to get your hands on a pair of tickets for Warped Tour on June 25 at the Home Depot Center in Carson.

You probably want to know some of the bands lined up first. Once again, Warped Tour has maintained a reputation for hosting some of the biggest and upcoming punk-rock, harcore, pop, and alternative bands. Well this year Warped Tour has a variety of bands from all genres planned. Some of the more popular, mainstream bands set up include Alkaline trio, All American Rejects, Four Year Strong, NeverShoutNever, Streetlight Manifesto, The Cab, and We The Kings.

Some older bands are booked as well, with 90s favorites like Sum 41, Reel Big Fish, Everclear, and the Dropkick Murphys. The classic bands bring a fun mix of older and younger generations enjoying the same music. Some upcoming bands that will be featured this year include Automatic Loveletter, Motion City Soundtrack, Pennywise, The Rocket Summer, and The VooDoo Glow Skulls. If you’d like to see the whole lineup, check out http://www.vanswarpedtour.com/warpedtour/bands.asp .

Now that we have you stoked on the lineup for this year, here is the easy way to win two tickets for Warped Tour. Simply, find someone in Baron Banner and ask them about tickets. It’s just a one-dollar donation per raffle ticket, and each ticket will be entered into a drawing. We have two pairs of two tickets, which heightens your chances! So just write your ID number on the back of a ticket and we’ll be sure to get a hold of you if you win! If you have any questions, you can ask Mr. Ziebarth in room 306.

Have you ever read a book and thought “This sounds familiar“? Chances are you’re actually right. So many teen books nowadays tend to copy each other’s story lines “coincidently”. It all started off half a decade ago with Twilight, or so everyone thought. Until the Age of Romantic Books came and flooded our libraries with authors like Meg Cabot, Simone Elkeles, and Nicholas Sparks (whose books have gotten so popular over the past years) it’s become a nightmare. Now teens everywhere can’t seem to let go; it’s as if their lives depended on that mere book. I often think of ways to save them from this misery, but it’s just too late. If you’ve ever read a romantic book like Twilight for instance, you’ll understand when I say books can get addicting.

Addiction doesn’t even cover it; you start reading without even thinking for a second how terrible the plot actually is. An average girl with no personality going to school with average friends until a guy comes into her life. And not just any guy, a tall dark and handsome guy who drives an expensive car. So they dramatically fall in love and even though things may get bad, nevertheless they end up living happily ever after. You might be thinking, “That sounds like a normal storyline.” But in reality, authors like the ones I’ve mentioned above follow a strict “Story Formula” that leads their success till this day. The reason why the main character (often a girl) has no personality is so that the reader injects their personality while reading the book. This makes it easier for the reader to imagine being in the protagonist’s shoes and wanting to find out what happens next. The male lead in the story must also be good looking for many obvious reasons. And as for the ending, unless there is a simply spectacular, thought out tragic ending, the ending is almost inevitably happy to avoid hate mail from fans. The formula is so genius that anybody can do it.

Since we are youth and we are the voices of all generations to come, I say we protest. If we don’t put a stop to this never ending cycle of story writing, the future of writing will just be replicas of what has been done before. If authors can’t come up with interesting and creative stories then they should not have been authors in the first place, maybe movie directing might be a better road for them. [Seeing as the movie industry is a failure and can no longer be saved.] You might think I am just a crazed paranoid teen who might think books are going to take over the world with mind control, but if you’ve read as many books as I have, you would understand. If you’ve read fourteen different books all from different authors and they all have the same plot, you know something has gone wrong. So I say, put down that book or write a better one.

While our juniors and sophomores were hard at work STAR Testing, FVHS seniors were treated to two assemblies courtesy of our fellow brethren ASB and BBN.  The assemblies were split up to two days which were in turn split up to four sessions; the first day consisting of one long three hour assembly while the second day consisted of three motivational speakers.  Yeah, getting out of school early without truancies was great but STAR Testing –for seniors– was not all it was cut out to be.

DAY 1: The Longest

Day 1, Assembly 1, Session 1 can best be summarized in the words of a wise capitalist, “I’ve never felt such a mixture of pity and indigestion.” Day 1 was long. Upon entering the gym, it appeared that this was going to be just another education-injected soma holiday with all of the senior social orders and cliques packed up in one gym like a can of sardines.  It’s quite pleasant to be there huddled up with all the people you love and the people you couldn’t imagine being within a forty-mile radius of.  Of course the screaming adolescent rabblerousing and the occasional passing of drugs was kept to a dull roar.  After all, this was a respectable high school assembly, not some wild college lecture.

With much added pleasure, it was nice to see new adult faces standing at the center of the gym, demanding the attentions of my fellow seniors.  It would have been slightly more rewarding had they demanded our ears instead.  As their mouths truffle-shuffled into fruitless inaudibility, it was difficult to discern whether our elders were talking about graduation or Bernoulli’s principles of fluid dynamics.  The gym became a wonderful animal house of excitement complete with shrieking bipedal beasts and oblivious obstinate zookeepers.  The idea of keeping a bunch of high on summer graduating seniors in one place for three hours appears to be another scientific conundrum.

The senior majority ruled the entire assembly; They talked over the presenters and did their own things.  It’s as if the presenters were merely court jesters placed by a king to appease the hormonal teenagers.  The audio gain from the speakers was so low and so poor that the whispers from my dear peers overwhelmed the gym.  Supposedly we went through both the Disneyland Grad Night and FVHS’ very own Grad Knight, but it was really hard to tell what was going on with all that Id swirling around the bleachers.  To lighten up the mood, the class of 2010 was treated with a fashion show and a dance-off.  While no names will be mentioned in praise of these futile exercises, it was clear who the winners and losers were.  When real skill displayed itself at the dance off, the vast majority pulled for the underdog who had little, if any skills at the art of dance, while the clear winner was slighted by a noticeably lesser scale of applause.  It just goes to show how prudent my fellow brethren are.

The climax to the first day was the icing on the mud pie cake that was our senior assembly.  We were treated to a complimentary special forty-minute episode of the BBN.  It was just like another episode of BBN, but forty minutes worth as opposed to the usual fifteen minutes.  One can imagine the great joy my fellow classmates had at watching nearly an hour of The View’s worthy successor, being that hosts of this special BBN were gracious and modest enough to tug us along with them without being too overly smug.  This episode featured never-before-seen clips unaired by the BBN with a quirky spin off of our beloved Baron’s Got Talent, but with Edison Chargers! M. Night Shyamalan couldn’t have predicted such a twist! The talent that the Chargers displayed was playing video games which this columnist thought was pretty clever being that most of our Barons don’t even know what video games are! But never mind my philosophical discourses, this is all about our seniors and the assembly we were invited to participate in for those wondrous three hours.  In fact, my fellow brethren were so happy to sit through the forty minute BBN that they loudly applauded it even before it was over!  Now that’s quality.  The grandest applause came at the end when the credits rolled and the seniors were let out for lunch at 11:23 AM; A fitting end to a wonderfully long day.

]]> http://www.baronbanner.com/2010/06/05/a-lack-of-stars-part-i-a-reflection-on-the-senior-assemblies/feed/ 3 http://www.baronbanner.com/2010/05/29/fvhs-red-cross-hosts-spring-blood-drive/ http://www.baronbanner.com/2010/05/29/fvhs-red-cross-hosts-spring-blood-drive/#comments Sun, 30 May 2010 00:52:14 +0000 Sami http://www.baronbanner.com/?p=9902 FV Red Cross Club hits record number of blood donations collected on campus in four years.

Amanda Hsu, Guest Writer

This Wednesday, May 26^th, the FVHS Red Cross Club hosted its second annual blood drive in the gym. Working closely with Orange Coast Memorial Hospital, the club collected a total of 198 pints of blood, which helped 594 people (each unit of blood has the potential to save three lives).

Any students 17 or older were permitted and legally allowed to donate, with the proof of ID and parent signature. Approximately 215 Barons signed up prior to the event. FVHS Red Cross Co-president, David Nguyen (’10) says, “In my four years as a Red Cross member, this has been the most successful blood drive. Apart from the backlog issue, the efficiency of FVRC’s blood drive has improved every time, and since this is my last blood drive, I couldn’t be happier with the outcome.”

Every two seconds, someone in the U.S. needs blood. More than 38,000 blood donations are needed every day. “I feel that the blood drive is vital to our community. It gives a sense of service to students,” says Club Advisor, Julie Chaicharee.

Having just selected the Red Cross board for the upcoming school year, this year’s board, passes the torch off to a promising young group: Carrie Ly (‘11), Brittany Chau (‘11), Becky Phan (’11), David Vu (’11), Tiffany Le (’11), Tiffany Do (’12), Stephanie Le (’12), Andrea Liu (’13), and Julie Vu (’13).

The FVHS Red Cross Club continues to expand on campus, in hope of raising awareness about community involvement, disaster education, and humanitarian relief. The board would like to thank all volunteers and donors for making the event a huge success.